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According to multiple sources, a 'security breach' may be to blame for the abrupt end to what has so far been a plentiful DVD screener season.

The release groups behind the encodes promised 40 leaks by the end of the year, but the last couple of dozen may never make it to your favorite warez sites.

It appears that the FBI is targeting members of the release group Hive-CM8, the group responsible for most of the screeners out now, including The Big Short, The Revenant, Hateful 8, Steve Jobs, Bridge of Spies and more.

Apparently, a person using the screen name 'Sup3rman,' quickly and easily exposed some basic details of a major uploader by checking the source of the screenshots attached to the releases. While the information was and is available publicly, there is speculation that the "expose" has scared off the group for the time being.

Verizon has decided to take the fight to its growing rivals, offering up to $650 to switch carriers and end your contract early.

Says the company: "Now is the best time to switch to Verizon and receive up to $650 per line. Verizon will buy out your contract and cover early termination fees and device or lease buyouts from your old wireless provider. A family of four who've been waiting for the right time to switch to Verizon can use the incentive on each eligible line and receive up to $2,600."

There are a number of caveats to getting that large sum, however. You must port your number from another carrier, you must purchase a 4G LTE smartphone with new device activation and you must trade-in your existing device. The trade-in must be in good working condition and the new line must remain active for at least six months.

In addition, if you switch now to an XL or XXL plan, you get an extra 2GB of bonus data, per month, forever.

According to numerous reports, Beatles songs were streamed 50 million times in the first 48 hours after they became legally available on sites like Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play.

For years, the Beatles' music was unavailable digitally due to contract disputes, but it seems the remaining members of the group and the estates of the others have agreed it is finally time to move on.

The most popular track, so far, is 'Come Together,' with over 2 million streams and on Spotify, 65 percent of listeners to the Beatles catalog were under the age of 34, an interesting statistic given that the group broke up in the 1970s.

According to TorrentFreak, 'Game of Thrones' is the most pirated TV show for the fourth year running, followed by 'The Walking Dead.'

The site estimates 14.4 million downloads via public torrent trackers for the 2015 season finale, handily beating out the competition. By comparison, the site estimates that 8.1 million viewers watched the finale on TV or via HBO Go or HBO Now.

The Walking Dead and fellow runner-up 'Big Bang Theory' each saw significant pirated downloads, but legitimate TV viewership was even higher.

TF bases their figures on several sources but does not go too much in-depth into how they are calculated. One thing to note is that streaming and cyberlocker downloads are not included so these numbers are possibly very low compared to real figures.

As people celebrated Christmas et al., Amazon celebrated record-setting holiday season for Prime. The company also doubled the number of Amazon devices.

According to the stats more than 3 million new people joined the Amazon Prime just in the third week of December alone. Amazon Prime shipped over 200 million items for free during the holiday season and the Christmas Eve was the busiest Prime day ever.

Amazon also sold twice as many devices compared to last year which held the record previously. The two of the top 3 most popular items on Amazon were their own products (#1 Fire tablet and #3 Fire Stick).

A record number of people also accessed Prime Music, Prime Video, and other services. The company has listed all the records, interesting facts about the most popular products, and all kinds of information about the services here.

Samsung has announced the Galaxy A9 today for the Chinese market, the high-end model for the company's metal designed A-series line.

The device has a 6-inch 1080p SAMOLED display with 2.5D curved glass, runs on Android 5.1.1 and is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 652 processor. Additionally, the high-end device has 3GB RAM, at least 32GB internal storage, a microSD slot, dual 13MP/8MP cameras with OIS and ƒ/1.9 aperture and a giant 4000mAh battery.

Finally, the glass and metal designed phone is just 7.4mm thin and includes a fingerprint sensor in the home button.

Pricing was unconfirmed but will be revealed next month before the phone's launch.

Saudi billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal has invested in ride-sharing service Lyft, valuing the company at near $5 billion.

The Prince's holding company will pay $105 million for a 2.3 percent stake. Even at a large $5 billion valuation, the ridesharing app has just a fraction of the value and drivers of market leader Uber, who has expanded around the globe.

Al-Waleed is not the first international investor for Lyft, which is U.S.-only currently. Chinese ride-sharing service Didi Kuaidi has also invested and so have smaller local companies around the globe.

By comparison, Uber has a market value of around $65 billion, making it one of the largest private companies on the planet.

Yesterday, Valve was forced to shut down the Steam store after users were able to see personal information in other people's accounts through their own dashboard.

While it was unclear what was going on, Valve was quick to shut the store to avoid unauthorized access.

Within a few hours, the store was back and everything was back to normal. Added Valve: "Steam is back up and running without any known issues. As a result of a configuration change earlier today, a caching issue allowed some users to randomly see pages generated for other users for a period of less than an hour. This issue has since been resolved. We believe no unauthorized actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information and no additional action is required by users."

The most notable holdouts in the streaming era, the Beatles, now have their music available via the most popular streaming services.

As of this morning (Merry Christmas), Spotify, Apple Music, Slacker, Tidal, Microsoft's Groove, Rhapsody, Deezer, Google Play and Amazon Prime will all have access to the Beatles catalog. Pandora is notably absent from the list, but they also do not make on-demand deals although you could hear Beatles tracks if you get the right radio shuffle.

Both Google and Microsoft have launched Santa tracking sites, giving kids a chance to check where Santa is currently flying and learn fun facts about the city/country/continent he's currently visiting.

Microsoft's tracker is in partnership with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) while Google is using its own software. For both, you can click on points of interest and see information about the locations while Microsoft's offering will also work through Cortana and bring up tidbits of info.

Check out more info here and here.

Two years after raising funds that valued the company at $650 million, Foursquare has raised money again, this time at a value of $250 million.

Additionally, the startup has also talked to potential acquirers which suggests that management and current investors may be ready to sell rather than continue to raise money through funding rounds.

Investors include the usual suspects like DFJ Growth, Microsoft, Silver Lake Partners, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

Overall, Foursquare has raised $120 million (including the new round) since launch in 2009 and the company currently has 50 million active users.

Microsoft has acquired Talko, the startup led by former Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie.

Talko lets users search phone conversations and add tags and bookmarks, a useful tech for companies that would like to allow workers to send pieces of conference calls to eachother or share notes from previous conversations. The tech also uses sound analysis to identify who is speaking on the conference call.

"[We are] pleased to announce today that Microsoft has acquired technology from Talko, maker of an innovative mobile app for on-the-go business communications. As part of the agreement, Talko employees will join the Skype team. Together, the new technology and talent will help us deliver great new features and capabilities in both Skype and Skype for Business," added Skype in a press statement.

Ozzie will not rejoin Microsoft despite his long relationship with the tech giant. Ozzie was formerly CTO and also Chief Software Architect (taking over for Bill Gates). In 1995, he sold his Lotus Notes software to IBM for $3.5 billion and is generally considered one of the best programmers of his time.

After four years of fighting, Kim Dotcom has lost his extradition battle as a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that the Megaupload founder could be sent to the U.S. to face copyright infringement charges.

The ruling implies that there is enough evidence for a case to be brought against Dotcom in the U.S., including charges of money laundering and racketeering.

Dotcom has already said he will appeal and the case will move to the New Zealand High Court. Dotcom's attorney Ira Rothkin said the ruling was based on "cherry-picked evidence" that completely ignored New Zealand's safe harbour laws.

As always with Megaupload, the best source for more information is Dotcom himself, and you can find his Twitter feed here: Kim Dotcom

Toshiba has said this morning that the company will report its largest net loss, ever, as it works on restructuring its unprofitable businesses.

The company will lay off 7800 employees, mainly from their consumer electronics division. The new cuts add to an already announced 2200, a total of 5 percent of the company's workforce.

Because layoffs in Japan are extremely expensive given worker's legal protections, the company says the rough quarter will culminate with a 550 billion yen ($4.5 billion USD) loss for the fiscal year ended March 31st.

"As a manager, I feel the responsibility deeply," said new president Masashi Muromachi. "My biggest task now is to ensure that we start recovering next year." Muromachi took over as president after a crippling accounting scandal was discovered that threatened to ruin the company and led to the resignation of the CEO and half of the board of directors.

Facebook has hit another nail into the coffin of Adobe's much-maligned Flash by switching to HTML5 for all Facebook web video.

Any video you upload or publish or view via the browser will be in HTML5 and not Flash, just like Facebook's current mobile and app experiences.

Daniel Baulig, engineer at Facebook, said: "Not only did launching the HTML5 video player make development easier, but it also improved the video experience for people on Facebook. Videos now start playing faster. People like, comment, and share more on videos after the switch, and users have been reporting fewer bugs. People appear to be spending more time with video because of it."

For the time being, Facebook will continue to support Flash-based games, but that seems to be the only support it will get moving forward.